


Earthquake Weather

by smilebackwards



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Foggy cleans up Matt's apartment. Jessica helps.





	Earthquake Weather

Matt’s apartment is a wreck. Shattered dishes, strewn papers, cracks opening into fissures in the brick. It’s like someone picked up Matt’s life and threw it against the ground. 

Foggy hadn’t had time for much more than a glance at the earthquake damage when he came to pick up Matt’s suit. He’d thought there’d be time for that later. 

Well, it’s later.

Foggy takes a deep breath. He dodges his way around the remnants of Matt’s favorite coffee mug to the corner of the kitchen where Matt keeps a broom and dustpan.

Foggy isn’t ready to pack Matt’s life away just yet, not the braille display and the bedsheets and the neatly organized dress shirts, but he can do this. Sweep up glass and spilled crackers. Move furniture back against the walls. He would have done it anyway, although preferably with Matt at his side, arguing about how he can somehow smell the glass, all _I can do that myself, Foggy, you don’t have to…_

Foggy has to sit down. The tile of Matt’s kitchen floor is solid in a way most things aren’t lately. 

Foggy’s been preparing himself for Matt’s death since two seconds after he’d found out about Daredevil but he’d still expected Matt to walk through that door at the police station right up until he hadn’t.

Foggy lets his head drop, presses his fists against his eyes. He shouldn’t have given Matt the suit, and with it, Foggy’s tacit permission to go get himself killed. But Matt would have gone anyway, in a paper-thin t-shirt instead of Kevlar. They’d both been trying to meet halfway.

A series of sharp knocks on the loft door startles Foggy out of his melancholy daze. He starts to get up, but the knocks were clearly perfunctory. There’s a sound like the deadbolt snapping and the door creaks open. 

Foggy has been vacillating between the five stages of grief all week. Exchanging depression for anger isn’t terribly difficult. He grabs a frying pan from the back of the stove and raises it above his shoulder like a baseball bat ready to swing. No looter is taking any more of Matt than Foggy’s already lost. Foggy turns the corner to the entry hall sharply.

Jessica is standing there. She has the doorknob in her hand.

“Sorry,” Jessica says. “I can get this fixed. I have a guy on retainer.”

Foggy lowers the frying pan.

Jessica looks at him and then away. “I didn’t realize anyone would be here,” she says, awkward.

Foggy nods. “Why are _you_ here?” he asks, curious. Last he’d heard, Alias Investigations was getting back up and running again and he doubted Jessica would ever be hurting for clients. Hogarth alone could probably keep her busy 24/7.

“Place was a disaster area when Murdock and I made a pit stop here. I thought I’d come by and”—Jessica shrugs uncomfortably—“help.”

_Help._ She means save Foggy from precisely what he’s doing. Sweeping up the debris of Matt’s life. “That’s— thank you,” Foggy says, thickly. “I could use a hand.”

“He was a withholding dick, but I liked him,” Jessica offers. “He was…funny.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he could be,” Foggy says, thinking of all Matt’s terrible blind jokes, the way the corners of his eyes had crinkled, visible even with his glasses on.

Jessica clears her throat. “So. What can I do?”

Foggy has her move the refrigerator back into place in the kitchen and she goes from there, straightening the art Matt hung on the walls and the armoire in the bedroom. Foggy follows behind her with a garbage bag and the vacuum. 

Matt kept all his most important things in the green chest by the couch. With his Daredevil suit missing, it’s easier to see the other things he held close. Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s boxing robe is folded carefully and beneath it is Matt’s diploma from Columbia, cheaply framed. There’s a Braille copy book of Thurgood Marshall’s collected writings and a Christmas ornament shaped like an avocado that Foggy gave Matt back in college, as a joke.

Part of Foggy hates that he had to dig for this, that all the things he would have truly associated to Matt were buried under Matt’s vigilantism, but maybe he’s been looking at things backwards. Maybe this was Matt’s foundation rather than his pushed aside past. Foggy’s breathing feels wet and ragged. Matt would have been able tell he’s crying from a mile away.

Jessica doesn’t say anything.

Matt’s Bible is on the floor beside the chest, the black cover worn soft. It opens easily to the middle, the page held by a pressed flower. Foggy runs his fingers along the raised dots. He doesn’t know what they’re going to do for a funeral with no body and the more-than-coincidental timing of Matt and Daredevil’s deaths. When he closes the chest, Foggy puts the Bible on top.

Foggy stands up, brushes the dust off the knees of his pants, and looks around. There are still cracks in the walls, but something in Foggy feels a little more squared away.

“Done for today?” Jessica asks, tying off the last garbage bag. The light through the window panes casts her face in blue.

“Yeah,” Foggy says. Maybe he’ll come back with boxes for the sheets and clothes, all Matt’s fancy ties, in a few weeks, but not today. Foggy has a personal assistant and a corner office now. He can keep the apartment paid up. 

Foggy picks up the case files he gave to Matt at Josie’s from the table. He may as well take his own advice, stay up-to-his-eyeballs busy in an effort to block out unwanted emotions. 

Jessica hesitates by the door for second, then takes the grey scarf from around her neck and hangs it on the coat rack. Foggy doesn’t ask. He turns out the lights.

The door doesn’t quite close.

“I’ll call my guy,” Jessica promises.

“Thanks,” Foggy says. He’s not ready to close the door on Matt himself yet anyway.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Earthquake Weather](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11950944) by [Jadesfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire)




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